Khairat Ibrahim / CC BY-SA Happiness Lies Through the Lens
Originally written: 10/18/2012
I was thinking about how my cat looks when she first runs outside after a prolonged rain and wondered to myself what feeling she was expressing as she trotted out the door and up the hill. And it occurred to me that the feeling was joy.
As a person, I don’t allow myself to feel too much joy or at least, not outwardly. Joy is a denigrated human emotion, relegated to Christmas songs and negative expressions like “oh joy” when what you really mean is “oh no.” When we see animals or children acting joyfully, we think “how cute.” That’s because about the only expressions of pure joy we regularly see are in animals and small children.
Children run, squeal, and giggle. A squirrel will run around and around a tree trunk for the fun or it. Cats romp and joyfully scratch logs. Dogs race around wagging their tails and panting. Adult humans, for their part, sit quietly on the sidelines, occasionally stepping in to make sure people don’t have too much fun.
It’s true that it would be a strange world if people were joyful all the time. It would take a lot of getting used to. But even a world where we could experience joy part of the time might be nicer. In our world, the dominant feelings appear to be fear, concern, worry, anxiety, anger, and annoyance. Peace, love, joy, and contentment, not so much.
But what is it about peace, joy, love, and contentment that make them the stuff of greeting cards, not real life? I was raised to think that positive emotions were all well and good but that the world was full of worries and it was our obligation, as human beings, to worry about them. So I did, and still do, worry about lots of things.
But in the balance of the equation, it seems like the good stuff gets short shrift in the world of worry. Worry is every day; joy is once a year.
I was reading an essay last night by a doctor who says he went to heaven while in a complete coma for 7 days. Actually, he doesn’t say where he went but when he described it, it sounded just like heaven right down to the ethereal beings and celestial choirs. He says unequivocally that “God” is love.
Now Christians have been saying God is love for a long time but something appears to have been lost in the translation, given all the smiting that goes on in the Bible. The god this doctor talks about is not a person and seems to have no desire to smite anyone.
If love is at the heart of the universe and joy is the result of feeling love, then maybe that’s our problem here on earth. We’re out of step with the universal zeitgeist. Instead of embracing the positive, we seem to have concluded that we can’t afford positive emotions anymore, or even that they’re not macho enough for our bad world (peace and love are for sissies).
How can we get to a better world if we don’t even believe in the emotions that would make it possible?
Me, I’m starting to want to rehabilitate the positive emotions, and for that matter, to relegate the negative ones. In myself, mind you, no one else. But if I could replace at least some of my fears with optimism, allow myself to feel truly happy and relaxed in any present moments that present themselves, to feel at peace with myself and with everyone else, no matter what is going on, that would be quite something. (Indeed it would, my more candid and practical self remarks).
I’m never going to be able to check my personality at the door and stop having thoughts and ideas (including contrary ideas), so any thoughts of floating off into an ether of bliss are right out. But accentuating the positive might make me a happier person and hence, a better contributor to life. And anyway, watching the cats being happy and content (and loving and at peace), makes it look like fun. In a nutshell, I want some of what they’re having!
